Oil on the head and fire in the belly!
Merry Monday by Parris Bailey
We will never get to the point when we can say we have experienced the fullness of the Spirit, just as we can never come to the end of the love of God. It’s a continual fire that is meant to consume us. I see it happen all the time in Christians, they get filled with laughter, or blessed with a new job or salvation comes to their household and then BAM the fire comes! People love to talk about the river of God but boy are they suprised to hear what goes on in the river. Yes, jump in, yes swim in the river and yes drink my friends. But know, my beloved, that as sure as I am writing this, the fire is a coming.
Peter says, “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.” I Pet.4:10
A.B. Simpson puts it this way; “Has He come to you as a fire? Has He come to consume the perishable and the corruptible, the sinful and the narrow? Has He burned out of you the foolishness, the sinfulness, the weakness, and the selfishness? Will you let Him? O this is a wholesome fire; it is a blessed fire. The thing you want consumed is a wilderness of woods and swamp. When a fire starts in a swamp, how quickly the wild things get out. How the serpents hiss and flee, and how everything is cleansed. God wants to burn the nest of scorpions out of your heart.” (ouch! Me have scorpions and serpents!)
Peter mentions our inheritance and how incorruptible it is, “To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” I Pet.1:4-7 Allow the Holy Ghost to finish the work in you.
Mr. Simpson wrote it so well, I dare not change what he is saying, listen to this; “Ask Him to let the fire in. If you have anything wrong in your heart, ask Him to come and consume it. There are things in your bosom that you want burned out. You want it to be as empty as a vessel that has been through the flames. We need not only to be washed out, but to be burned out, if we would be pure vessels fit for the Master’s use. Ask Him to send the fire, and receive it as the fire of love. O for the Divine love that endureth all things, that hopeth all things, that never faileth. Let it burn on and on and never cease — the unquenchable fire of God in the heart. Then shall it be what the fire is in the wheels of human industry, moving the machinery of life. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Before the day closes, you may be like that burning bush, baptized with fire, a glowing thing — little and obscure, but a wonder to earth and heaven, alive with light and glory and purity; nothing in yourself, but, like that wire which runs along your streets, charged with electric fire so that a man would not dare touch it, it is so alive. So you, though little and lowly, may be fiery channels to touch other lives, and make them yield to Him. Let us realize that the dispensation of today is supernatural as that of Pentecost.”
Try me, move me, do want you want with me Holy Ghost!